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1 Perhaps Merriam-Webster is coming too close to making a political statement?

2 The "region" would have to be the whole U.S. at a minimum.

3 Do people pronounce "bubblier" as "bubbular"? Or "gangliar" as "gangular"? Or "uglier" as "uggular"? These are the closest I can find. Maybe someone can find others with great similarities to "nuclear".

CJ

Veteran Member46,093

Anonymous:

I think words whose spelling differs significantly from the pronunciation (e.g. colonel, yacht, quay) are the hardest ones to learn. I often tend to think of these words as words with an 'irregular pronunciation'. I personally find pronouncing proper and geographical names difficult sometimes. Unless you know how 'River Thames' is to be pronounced it's virtually impossible to get it right. The same is true for 'Reading' and 'Antruther', to name but a few.

Alienvoord:

CalifJim, I don't see how the Merriam-Webster is making a political statement by reporting a fact (unless they're making it up?)

and I'm not sure why we need to find other examples. The fact is that a large number of people pronouce the word this way. So it is something more than a mispronunciation.

Apparently the people who say it do think that this is the way the word is pronounced. some articles

http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/001133.html

http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/001134.html

Full Member346

Anonymous:

well, to me the words ive always found hard to pronunce or at least set a difference are "thing" and "think" or "can" and "can't" Emotion: angry

EnglishDVD:

my students have real difficulty with ship / sheep [bah]
and well... sheet and another word!

it can be embarrassing but luckily sheet isn't a word used very often. Emotion: embarrassed

New Member05

Englishuser:

EnglishDVD.commy students have real difficulty with ship / sheep [bah]
and well... sheet and another word!

it can be embarrassing but luckily sheet isn't a word used very often.

This is a familiar dilemma with many students, I should think. Relatively few languages have as many native vowel sounds as the English language.

Regular Member717

Alienvoord:

Canadian English has 14 vowels, and other kinds of English can have even more.

BarbaraPA:

At my company, we have to say "borrower" quite often. It's fine once, but by the third time, it starts sounding like "barr-rr."

My personal one is "jewelry." I don't say joo-ell-ry, but jool-ry. People make fun of me.

Regionally, when people say "drawer" as "draw" or "tour" as "tur" it just makes me cringe. But not as much as hearing our nation's capital referred to as "Warshington."

Veteran Member26,670

Englishuser:

Hi Grammar Geek,

You wrote:

Regionally, when people say "drawer" as "draw" or "tour" as "tur" it just makes me cringe.

I am under the impression that 'drawer' is pronounced 'draw' when we're referring to a sliding box.

RE: The Hardest Words to pronounce!? page 3

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